The unpredictability of college basketball game among sports bettors and most college handicappers in the early season is quite high, relying solely on historical data and statistics, among the best guesstimate from pre-season performance and player moves.

By the time mid-season rolls around sports bettors and college handicappers have a pretty strong sense on their college predictions and picks as the following 6 tips all help reveal high performance teams and match-ups, and where value can be found.

Most importantly however is by mid-season we’ve already seen the majority of strategy and team adjustments And like most college seasons, you have teams that come out of the gates dominant, and then fizzle, while others take a slower momentum to ramp up. The key is to find value in those teams that are not on the sports book radar, and find the value to lay our investments.

————————–Winning College Picks See the latest NCAA college basketball picks covering a pool of industry college handicappers, computer algorithm generated predictions and one of the largest pool of global consensus basketball predictions for those contrarians and those who leverage the public opinion within their college betting system. ————————–

In my conversations over the college season with a few solid performing ncaa handicappers in Vegas and at industry events, and those who I consider are eithe wise guys or border line wise guys (and investors), they shared a lot of good insight and feedback in the chats. I admit, some of what they said or claim was complete bullsh*t (for good reason), but after a good range of conversations, I picked up a few good nuggets from their decades of experience. Some new tips I hadn’t considered before, and other tips match to how other sports bettors get an edge, and used by successful sports investors.

Tip 1: Wiseguys watch the subtle changes to find sports betting value

One college basketball tip that stood out among the quality of these wise guys is the comment about picking up on key changes that take place through the first part of the season.While the media does a superb job covering the majority of tweaks and pivots in a teams strategy and team, wiseguys take a 30,000 foot view of all this information.

This includes a birds-eye view of the college betting scene and teams. But once they get this marco view, they’ll zero in on a few key adjustments they view as having the most impact. Its not necessarily the most obvious changes, or media sensationalized changes on ESPN or SkySports, but those subtle adjustments that provide the tune-up.

Wise guys look for changes that the general public has not caught onto….yet. And of the few areas they’ve placed their lens on to monitor, they’ll soon realize if they’re perception of the team is more accurate than the general public or sports bettors perception. This results in finding attractive value as a sports bettor and investor.

Obviously wise guys, handicappers and sports bettors don’t have 24 hours in a day to monitor every single change, then evaluate, and repeat. But instead wise guys put a lens on a few key changes that are key performance indicators (KPI’s) they choose for some rhyme or reason (from their experience) that make the biggest impact in the long term sports investing over the basketball season.

I’ll be the first to admit a lot of the conversations I’ve had with wise guys have been a hell of a lot of white noise. But among this noise I’ve picked up on a general theme in how these college handicappers get a sense of team performance when making their college picks.

Team season record compared to last X (ex. 5) games. Too many sports bettors pay to much attention to overall performance, versus the recent impacts from the adjustments. Similarly if you play with the charting features of the handicappers track record, and adjust the time frame by sport, you’ll see similar patterns in both the wins and losses (and units, profit and yield).For example, a losing streak in the charts at first glance looks bad, but in the short term are you seeing a hockey stick-like curve of the handicapper making up for the losing streak?

Recent performance may be an indicator of injuries, schedule, etc. and an obvious cause to dig deeper. But also as the college basketball schedules get more aggressive later in the season, so can the win ratio in the short term (ex. team is 9-8 overall, and 5-0 in the last few games…is a good indicator of a team turning point, but you may also want to consider our post on college basketball rematch betting tips.

Divide and conquer. Wise guys seem to approach the season performance by dividing the season into X number of time frames or groupings, and using these time-spans in the season to benchmark performance. They’ll break the season into a 4 to 6 or more markers, and use this as indicators to benchmark trends and winning/losing performance.

Wise guys and successful college handicappers will show this in their college basketball picks from their performance track record…assuming its fully transparent. And wise guys like most of us don’t win them all. At best they may hit a +65% prediction accuracy in the season – rare but achievable. But wise guys like most sports investors understand the value in sports investing, and need only to put the money on the right games and win over 52.4% of their college picks. Thus these 6 tips will help you understand how they find and select their college picks.

Tip 2: Wiseguys watch team performance, and college baskeball predictions from a 30,000 ft. view

The most successful wiseguys, sports investors and business men I’ve met will always look at the big picture. From an investment perspective its not much different then how Wall Street does it. Same goes for sports investing, and in this post to uncover a higher confidence understanding of a college basketball teams performance.

The wise guys I spoke with don’t look at the weekly play-by-play performance in college basketball to make their basketball picks They’ll watch it of course, but its a much lower influencer in their decision making, versus the big picture.

Tip 3: Freshmen game time and performance

Wise guys get a lot of insight on an NCAA team from the amount of playing time their new players receive, and how they adjust to the big leagues of the NCAA scene.

Obviously if the freshmen are getting high playing time, and increasing statistics, then its very likely their performance is making the positive impact they coach had expected.

Conversely, if the team gave the freshmen more game time in the early season, and now much less, its a good indicator his performance isn’t contributing to the overall performance of the team in the eyes of the coaching strategy.

Tip 4: Play the unseen champion

This is an interesting indicator on how wise guys handicap the college basketball mid season, but it was not a commonly shared point among the wise guys I spoke with…actually only 2 mentioned it, and as these two do very, very well in their sports investing I thought its worth mentioning for you to test it yourself.

These wise guys look for the odd man out. They’ll look for that 3rd best player who goes overshadowed among the first and second top players, but makes an impact. Consistently these wise guys have found how effective this can be (which makes me curious how effective it could be applied to NBA picks).

It’s rather simple, but these wiseguys will find out who the third best player is on the team, and analyze their performance. The primary KPI is if this player is showing solid performance, then looking if the team performance mimics this performance. And it works the opposite too. These two wise guys indicated its not a commonly known KPI most look at, but have been very surprised how effective its been in making their college basketball picks.

I don’t fully understand why that is, but the general feelings is that this player is unlikely to be double teamed, or not getting the same attention from the opposing teams, or over-shadowed by the first top two players. Whatever the reason, if they’re playing is making a strong impact and it correlates to the same performance trend as the team, its a good bet to consider in your college picks and find the value at the bookmakers on their games.

Tip 5. Track the top 5 teams stats

I won’t go in-depth on this one, but simply watch the team record and key statistics on the top few teams, and compare their record and stats against the season.

Why? Team records can be deceptive when they’re influenced by games where they played against weaker opponents. A simple way to determine how a team is truly performing is just look at the five or six best teams they’ve played (in terms of their record), and see how their performance has stacked up against those teams, versus their overall performance.

Quick insight when determining your college picks is look at the key stats as team record, performance against the spread, shot ratio, etc.

Tip 6: Wise guys look for trends in key statistics

Good college basketball handicapper like those at Intelligent Betting Tips, or other reputable college handicappers as Maddux Sports and Docs Sports, may look at the overall trend in the KPIs used in making their NCAA picks. A solid college basketball team should show a gradual upward trending curve over the season.

Why? Over the weeks and months in the season the players improve for a number of reasons. Strategy shift, synergy among players and team momentum, etc.

Not to say this is the case every time, but looking at trends over the key stats is a good KPI (key performance indicator) successful wise guys use.

The 6 tips above that wise guys use to handicap ncaa college basketball for their college picks are just a few that came from conversations I’ve had. I’ve selected the above to share as they appeared to me as a general theme among the wise guys who I know are successful, and those whom I know have done well in NCAA college basketball specifically.

But if there is one thing to take away from all of this when you’re deciding on which college handicapper to buy your basketball picks, or handicapper service you’ll subscribe too this season, is that when a team is moving in the right direction you’ll find consistent improvement in the majority of the KPI’s or statistics.

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